Miriam Leung (Earth-1)
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice." Miriam Hua Leung is an NPC in The Extras campaign. She was introduced in Flux (S01E01) and was a supporting character throughout Season 1, but has become a main character and member of the Extras in Season 2 onward. Miriam is a sweet, compassionate and shy young girl with a penchant for housekeeping. She is a doting friend and a wonderful cook. She is the on-again/off-again girlfriend of Avery Jarrett. Personality Miriam is quiet and unassuming with a sweet personality. She is shy around most new people and doesn't go out of her way to be outgoing or make new friends. While she does become more outspoken the more time she spends with someone, she is never charismatic or outgoing. She generally friendly and tries her best not to hurt anybody's feelings or say anything uncouth; she hates offending people and often tries her best to make them feel better about themselves if she can. Miriam comes from a hosuehold that stresses academic excellence, social excellence and overall success. Growing up, her schedule was always rigidly segmented. Her parents are also very strict and disciplinary, and Miriam was often punished for failure, for slacking off and/or for not living up to their very high, very strict standards. Thanks to this upbringing, Miriam is very academically inclined, constantly striving for good grades. Miriam is the only Extra who is hesitant to begin a case if she hasn't finished her homework (though this is primarily due to stress, see below). She does not claim to have a high IQ but "a near-superhuman work ethic". Miriam wants very much to make her parents proud, especially since her brother's arrest. Miriam is very high-strung and often gets stressed out easily, usually by small things, school or relationship drama. She has always had these anxiety issues and the stress of being a superhero isn't helping. Between her schoolwork, her family, her friends, her boyfriends and her superhero responsibilities, Miriam is very stressed out, all the time. She deals with this stress by becoming quiet, intenralizing the anxiety. She is also very anal about neatness and cleanliness. Messess stress her out and she often cannot relax or rest until her surroundings are clean. In this regard, she often acts as the Den Mother around the Extras Headquarters and sometimes does laundry for the team. Ironically, in times of high stress (such as combat or life and death situations), Miriam is overcome with an odd sort of calm; an almost zen-like state. She gets tunnel-vision, focusing on a single short-term objective at a time in order to overcome great challenges. While she developed this reflex as a test-taking method, Miriam has naturally implemented it into her combat ethic: focusing on a single target or goal at a time before calmly moving on to the next objective until the battle is over. Miriam's primary character trait is her compassion and gentle nature. She is also very doting to her friends but can also act very strict, like a mother. This comes from her childhood, having taken care of her twin brother Sidmey. As her parents were always busy at work, Miriam found herself responsible for helping Sidney keep up with school, making sure he did his work, cleaned his room and ate, and all of this in conjunction with her own responsibilities. This has bled into her life today, as she continues to act like a mother, albeit it is now to her teammates. Miriam has the capacity of forging deep, empathetic bonds with others. She feels what others feel, both good and bad. A basic example of this is the way she cries at virtually every movie she watches, even comedies. This empathy allows her to comfort others. She hates seeing people in pain and she yearns to do what she can to help them and ease their pain. This capacity for empathy is in large what allows her to be such a powerful healer: she connects with the pain of others and takes that pain away. Miriam secretly goes to the hospital in Seattle every Sunday, where she spends time with patients and healing them of their various ailments and injuries. This experience is very important to her, although she is quiet and depressed for a long time after every visit. Miriam is also a fiercely loyal friend and is very protective of the people she loves. She can get very intense in such situations and has the capacity to act uncharacteristically hostile if she feels her friends are threatened. An example of this was when she sent a barrage of texts to Morty, trying to persuade him from pursuing Margot (Reality, S03E01). She also displays this side of her when competing against others; she is scary competitive and is capable of becoming very hostile, talking lots of trash and doing whatever it takes to win. Her friends regard this trait with humor, but she feels very bad about it every time. Overall, Miriam is a sweet and loving person who, while high-strung, is a brave hero and a compassionate, doting friend. History Miriam and her twin brother Sidney were born to Donald and Song Leung, a spinal surgeon and psychiatrist respectively, in Los Angeles, California. She spent her formative years in Santa Monica (a suburb of Los Angeles). A fussy baby, Miriam was the subject of a study by her mother on the effect of certain stimuli on child development. Miriam excelled early in school but was often bullied and teased by the other children for her modest manner of dress and a speech imediment that made it difficult to pronounce her R's correctly. This caused Sidney to fight other kids on her behalf, which in turn resulted in Sidney becoming home schooled for several years. Miriam feels guilty about this to this day. Throughout her childhood, she often was the primary caregiver to her brother Sidney, who suffered bipolar disorder. She took care of feeding him, helping him with whatever he needed and ensuring he keep to task on their parent's rigid schedules. The two were very close and possessed what Sidney calls "Wonder Twin Powers". When she was eleven years old, her father accepted a position as Chief of Surgery at Sacred Heart Hospital, just outside the little town of Northampton, Washington. The family was forced to upend themselves and leave California, which devastated Miriam. She threw a tantrum when they left and cried about her friends every night for nearly three months. She adjusted to life in Northampton slowly and not always well. In the sixth grade, she made friends with Rick Bythesea and began hanging out with him and Ezra Peets. She only spent time with them at school, however, as she was far to stressed and busy with her school and extracurricular activities to pay much attention to her social circle. Notable Accomplishments *Healed Justicar of the 'Unidentified Alien Disease' (Heroes, S01E13) *Fought in the Battle of the Sidekicks (Idols, S02E09) *Fought in the Battle of Stone Bridge (Horde, S02E13) *Fought in the Battle of the White House (Oblivion, S02E14) Notable Victories *Doctor Otaku (Horde, S02E13) *Gloria Tessmacher (Horde, S02E13) Relationships with Others Miriam is somewhat awkward when she first meets people and is generally shy and non-outgoing. She dislikes being in front of large crowds and finds it difficult to make new friends. However, with her close friends, Miriam is very sweet and tends to dote, acting like a mother hen. She is also very polite and will try to avoid hurting others' feelings if at all possible, twisting her opinions into borderline white-lies to help her friends avoid hurt feelings. Sidney is her twin brother and for many years, was her best friend. As twins, the two spent every moment together growing up. Miriam took care of Sidney and was often the only ear that would give him time to listen. She also was very supportive of his artistic talents, and the two even had what Sidney refered to as "Wonder Twin Powers"; that unspoken, empathetic bond between twin siblings. She loves her brother and over the years grew increasingly worried about his condition, as his bipolar disorder seemed to be getting progressively worse. She was thrilled at his miraculous recovery and their relationship was once again very close. Her heart was broken when he was arrested in Heroes (S01E13) and she struggled to deal with that for many months. She would not visit him in prison with her parents and she felt as if there was some large hole in her heart with her brother's absence. In Horde (S02E13) she spoke with him and the two talked about the events of the past two seasons and have once again come to good terms. They now communicate regularly by phone and she is happy to have him a part of her life once again. Margot Audley is Miriam's best friend and closest confidant. The two seem to get along famously and Miriam finds Margot adorable and quirky. Their personalities compliment each other, and Miriam trusts Margot implicitly. Miriam is often a comforting ear or voice for Margot when she needs someone to talk to, and Miriam is usually one of the first to suggest a "Girl's Outing" to help Margot when she is sad. Miriam loves Margot's strange habits and odd quirks, and Margot always makes her giggle. She tends to vent to Margot a lot, which is new for Miriam, who usually internalizes her feelings. Miriam is also most protective of Margot, lashing out at anybody she perceives to be threatening her. While she doesn't see Margot as some kind of wounded bird, Miriam does see Margot for the sensative, pure soul that she is and Miriam wants to protect that. Seeing Margot hurting is the worst thing for Miriam, as their friendship has served to deepen her already strong empathetic connections. Margot is by and large her best friend, hands down, no questions asked and Miriam would do anything to protect her. Avery Jarret is Margot's on-again/off-again boyfriend and the most complex relationship she has. While she's known Avery as long as he's attended Olympus Academy, she never really paid much attention to the quiet loner. However, in her eleventh grade year, she was saved from being hit by a car from a hooded figure she recognized as the Seattle Gangbanger. She soon fell for the masked vigilante and began a small dialogue with him on the internet. She discovered the Gangbanger's true identity at the end of Season 1 and from there, she and Avery began to date. She was very happy with Avery, and she fell in love with the gentle, intelligent and excitable boy she saw beneath his rough exterior. But in time, he showed that he was not willing to communicate with her which led to their break up. Miriam took it really hard and while they pined separately for weeks, they eventually got back together. They broke up again at the end of Season 2. As of the first episode of Season 3, the two have broken up and don't seem to be to keen on mending the fence. This has made Miriam become very sad and more withdrawn than before. She feels hurt and betrayed by Avery, who she told everything to; she was hurt that he wasn't willing to talk to her about anything. While she loves Avery and misses his greatly, she isn't sure how compatible they really are. To say that Miriam finds Morty Cassidy annoying is a massive understatement. Morty's antics, weird humor and habits and smoking habit all serve to make her cringe slightly when Morty walks in the room. While she thinks Morty is nice enough (she guesses), he's totally weird and immature, unable to take anything seriously. While he has managed to surprise her a few times (such as when he saved her from a near-fatal injury from Cannonball), Mercy largely sees Morty like an ADD 8 year-old. She was terrified to discover they married in an alternate future and has an unspoken agreement with Morty to never let that come to pass. Miriam gets really annoyed any time Margot brings that dark future into conversation. More recently, she has grown angry at Morty. Having put together that Morty had feelings for Margot, Miriam has been scolding Morty regularly to stay away from her; Margot's life is confusing and hard enough without Morty stepping in to make things worse. She is determined to keep Morty from hurting her best friend and finds it honestly crappy of Morty to pursue her at such a vulnerable time in her life, as his immature nature renders him unable to commit or treat Margot how she deserves to be treated. Miriam has recently been spending time with Shawn, as he also suffers from anxiety and high levels of stress. They first started hanging out more just after the battle of Stone Bridge; at the football stadium, she was suffering a panic attack in the wake of the battle and Shawn talked to her, helping her deal with the problem with some exercises he learned. Since then, they have become Stress Acountability Partners, calling each other whenever they begin having panic attacks to talk each other down. She finds she has a lot in common with Shawn and really likes hanging out with him. When Joe Fordman first joined the team, she was one of the only ones to treat him nicely, as she was aware of his status as the one who would eventually become Justicar: Margot's future husband. She likes Joe alot and thinks he's good for Margot. She finds everything Joe does for Margot to be adorable and romantic and she secretly longs for a boy who will treat her half as nicely as Joe treats her. Needless to say, in the wake of their break-up, she is definitely a MarJoe shipper. Miriam developed a crush on Ben Puckett, aka Hyperion, immediately. She held a light, flirtatious friendship with him for a bit, even after she discovered he was an alien. As time has gone on, since she got back with Avery, her feelings for Ben seem to have gone for the most part. She does think Ben is an awesome guy and she considers him a good friend. She thinks the degree to which he and Margot are similar is uncanny. Clay Palcowski is another Extra and a newer member of the team. While Miriam thought he was super creepy at first, she's come to actually like him a lot (as a friend) and she thinks he's pretty funny. The two are often paired up in the field and thus have learned to trust each other quite a bit. While she used to have a massive crush on Bill McPhee, she hates him, ever since he abducted her and tried to blow her up in a school bus. Powers and Abilities Mirian is an extrahuman and is able to perform a superhuman power, in addition to some mundane training: *'Archery: '''Miriam is a highly skilled archer and has won many awards and contests related to archery. She is a crack shot, able to hit small, moving targets from long ranges. She is able to consistently hit targets engaged in melee combat (which is very tough) and can disarm with arrows. She is able to fire four arrows in ten seconds. *'Biokinesis:' Miriam is capable of controlling the biological structure of other people's bodies. While this power manifests itself primarily as Empathetic Healing (see below), it has many additional uses. She can produce biomolecular energy at will to affect organic matter that she touches, allowing her to heal physical and mental damage inflicted on a target, as well as setting bones, removing, burns, frostburn, disease and sickness and even near-fatal wounds (such as gunshots or fatal stabwounds). Clay theorizes that she might be able to reactivate suppressed extrahuman abilities with her power. She has demonstrated increased mastery of her powers as the campaign goes on: she is capable of sedating an enraged Avery and cleaning a junkie's body of drugs; her touch helped Morty during especially difficult periods during his quest to quit smoking. She is able to use her powers offensively, to grant diseases or even tumors to her enemies, but she has yet to use her powers in this capacity. **''Empathetic Healing: '''By empathetically connecting to the pain of a person, Miriam is able to draw the pain away and heal them. She must be touching her subject to heal. During the healing process, she seems to experience the pain of the injury she is healing. After healing for extended periods of time, or after healing incredibly grievous injuries or a sickness of any sort, Miriam is notably fatigued. The most notable side effect of her power is that she has the chance of taking on the ailment she is healing, which makes her power somewhat dangerous to use ***'Life Force Exchange: In times of desperation, Miriam can directly channel her own vitality and immune system into a person. While the healing this provides only the most basic healing, it can prove the difference between life and death for her allies. *'Educated: '''Miriam is a very educated young woman, with a broad knowledge of many academic subjects, most notably in the areas of mathematics and psychology. *'Functional Gaydar:' Exposure to The Fix's energy blast during the Battle of the White House has unlocked a teritary power: Miriam is capable of sensing, with 100% accuracy, the sexual orientation of a person. She believes this comes from her natural empathy, but is not sure. *'Hand-to-Hand: Miriam is not a proficient hand-to-hand fighter, but she has learned a few basic moves from Avery and Margot. *'Multilingual: '''Miriam is fluent in English and Spanish. *'Musician: Miriam is very, very good at playing the violin. Paraphernelia Mercy hits the streets with only a small selection of gear and equipment. *'Compound Bow: '''Miriam fights using a modified Martin-Jaguar Takedown Bow. It is painted white and remains her primary mode of attack. It has a range of 100 yards. **'Specializaed Arrows:' Miriam's arrows are all blunted, to avoid inflicting any lethal injuires to her opponents. While she did use trick arrows for the Battle of Stone Bridge, they were lent to her by Justicar and are not a normal part of her arsenal. Weaknesses Miriam also suffers from a number of weaknesses that hinder her in some way: *'Anxiety:' Miriam suffers from general anxiety and is prone to panic attacks if she is not careful. *'Competetive:' Miriam is very, very competitive and acts uncharacteristically hostile when in a competetive situation. Notes *Miriam's Play-By actor is Ellen Wong. *The name Miriam means "Star of the Sea". *Miriam was the last Season 1 character to be revealed to have powers. *Miriam was the last character to join the Extras in Season 1. *In an alternate future, Miriam is married to Morty. This fact has caused a lot of antics between Margot, Morty and Miriam. Trivia *Miriam's locker number was 518 (11th grade) and 604 (12th grade). Consequently, this means she had her locker right next to Margot's both years they went to high school together. *Miriam doesn't speak or understand Chinese. *Miriam is the younger twin by 6 minutes. *At the Mudslide Coffee House, her regular order is an Almond Mocha with extra whip. *Her favorite movie is ''Never Been Kissed. *Her favorite flower is the tulip. *In the first grade, her role model was Betsy Ross, until she learned she didn't actually design the American Flag. *Knows the steps to the modern tango. *Favorite color is a tie between White and Pink. *Love's 80's music and contemporary Pop. She is an avid listener of the Billboard Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest. Category:Extrahuman Category:Female Characters Category:Leung Family Category:Empathetic Healing Category:Lawful Good Characters Category:The Extras Category:Extras Category:Extras Season 1 Category:Extras Season 2 Category:Extras Season 3 Category:Archery Category:Native of Earth-1